The Best Laid Plans (2014) - TV Show

Parliament is a secret and esoteric world with its own culture, customs and language. THE BEST LAID PLANS is a rollicking journey into this cosseted world. Our guide is the earnest, hopeful, English PhD, Daniel Addison (played by Jonas Chernick), head speech writer for the Leader of the Opposition. When Daniel catches his girlfriend and her boss in flagrante delicto he decides to return to academe as assistant professor of English at the University of Ottawa. But you don't just walk away from the Opposition Party — freedom has a price and in this case it's finding a candidate in a riding 50 kilometers away and managing the campaign in the next election, scheduled in approximately eight weeks. The catch: the riding in question has voted solidly for the Government Party since Confederation and the incumbent is Eric Cameron, the extremely popular finance minister whose plurality in the last election was over 90%.

Disillusioned with the grinding cynicism of Canadian federal politics, speechwriter Daniel Addison finally has enough when he catches his girlfriend going down on his politician boss. Unfortunately, the party's chief political wonk strongarms Daniel into first finding a candidate and running a election campaign in a hopeless riding before he can resign. Daniel finally finds a candidate in Angus McLintock, an eccentric engineering professor who agrees on the conditions that Daniel teaches his English for Engineers course and he himself does no campaigning. With their dummy campaign in place, everything starts to go wrong as these schemers find themselves in a race which their unorthodox deeds and goals start to energize it. Now, Daniel, inspired by the idealism by the supporters, especially the lovely daughter of one veteran volunteer, finds he is a fight to win despite his best efforts.